Poland: From Socialism to Prosperity: Review

 

Poland’s Economic Turnaround and the Importance of Being Rich

I watched an interesting documentary on the growth of Poland from the 70s to the 2020’s. Based on the research of Dr. Rainer Zitelmann “Poland: From Socialism to Prosperity” is a short encapsulation of the country’s economic growth over the last 70 plus years.

A decimated place after World War II, Poland fell under the sway of the USSR. Poland’s Soviet style planned economy crushed all dissent from citizens during the 1970’s. Workers, fed up with price increases on basic foods (eggs, bread) rioted against the ruling parties. After years of long lines for consumer goods, and starvation wages they tried a different approach.

In the 1970s they borrowed from the West to get their industries going again. This worked for a while, an influx of money provides citizens with a chance to purchase goods and services not available before. Now you could actually buy shoes in the size and color you prefer, instead of grabbing whatever remains. Trade opened up access that wasn’t there before.

Hyperinflation and Unemployment

But loaned money needs to be repaid and Poland struggled to keep up at first. Borrowing isn’t actually a reform anyway. Underlying restrictions on business, price controls and fake unemployment numbers remain. Everyone in a socialist country is “employed” after all. Only after 1988 did the real reforms begin. But even here, only after union workers used strikes to protest wages and living conditions. The ration card system was finally done and trade flourished for the first time. But the hyperinflation made everything very expensive. Since 1970 the foreign debt grew from 1 billion dollars to 40 billion in 20 years. First they agreed on a debt reduction deal with Western creditors. Then the fake 0% unemployment numbers became the real 15% to 20% unemployment numbers.

By the early 2000s, ownership in consumer goods like TV’s and cars went up exponentially. The turnaround was dramatic. The poorest country in Europe had experienced the fasted growth. Inflation went from over 500% to around 7% by the end of the 1990s.

Attitudes on Money

Zitelmann ends his documentary with a survey on attitudes within the country toward wealth. In Poland 49% of respondents believe it’s “really important” to become rich. This puts it in the same league as Asian countries where nearly 60% answered the same way. In the US, and the rest of Europe, only 28% agreed. This might be a little misleading, however. The word “rich” can mean a lot of things. For all of my life, America has been a prosperous and free country. Certainly we have crime, poverty and unemployment. But relative to Poland in the 70’s, and much of the developing world, it’s a paradise. The fact is we’ve always been “rich”. 

The rest of the world has caught up, mostly, since the 1990s in economic freedom and wealth creation. 

Left Populism

Populism is on the rise in America because of the meaning of the word rich. It looks different on the right and left however. The left-wing Marxists will always hate capitalism because they can’t control who becomes rich. When consumers make their own decisions about spending it deprives Marxists of their power. The Marxist wants to squeeze the economy like an orange and drink the juice but has no concern with growing more oranges. They’re fine with rich people who do their bidding. Do you own an airline, set your prices according to their arbitrary fees. Do you own a professional football team, make sure your hiring and advertising reflects DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) check boxes. Central planning looks a little different in America because the cultural Marxists demand institutional compliance at every level.

Right Populism

On the right, any sort of anti-rich sentiment is a reaction to the elites destroying the middle class. I don’t mean rich people that make a money and grow business. Nor do I mean super wealthy playboys with yachts and pricey real estate. The resentment is for the titans like Bill Gates who push untested vaccines and make money from the stock price. Or, those who use lawfare against regular people who can’t afford to defend themselves in court. It’s a matter of power and control. When a country is managed by oligarchs (essentially) the way America is, it destroys the middle class and puts growth out of reach for too many. I’ve always been a free market guy, but we’ve been sold a lie about what that is.

Look behind the scenes and you’ll see the government manipulating outcomes everywhere. Twitter was full of FBI plants that shut down accounts, critical of official policies on Covid to the Russia collusion hoax. Twitter was supposedly a private company.   

Politics and Corruption

On a political level, the wealthy business class used to vote with Republicans and defend their own interests. Today, they bend the knee to the woke crowd. A few years ago Senator Tom Cotton had an exchange with the CEO of Kroger, Rodney McMullen at a Senate hearing. McMullen wanted help for a merger with Albertsons. Cotton’s instruction is brilliant, you fired Christians who worked for you because they didn’t want to wear the gay rainbow? Republicans traditionally help businesses remove red tape. But their voters, the traditional values crowd, aren’t getting equal treatment from the ownership class. We’re told to comply or be fired, call people by their pronouns.  Senator Cotton was appropriately dismissive “I’m sorry this is happening to you, best of luck”.

Another view of rich is the spiritually corrupting side. Too many people put “getting rich” at the top of their importance list, without understanding the trade-offs. They pursue wealth at the expense of family, friends and moral conviction. A country full of people that worship money will squeeze out morality and devalue life. Why does this sound familiar? It’s the America of today.

Conclusion

So yes, wealth is good and prosperity is beneficial for all. But we have to get the order right. Put God first, free up the economy and watch Him bless it. Over 70% of citizens in Poland consider themselves Catholic. That puts it among the most Christian countries in the world. It’s at least an indicator that they place high importance on traditional values. Religious participation has slipped in recent years. Catholics made up over 87% of the population in 2011. Hopefully their idea of rich won’t push out morality like it has in the US. God bless the Poles, may they keep Him at the center of daily life. And God bless the USA, may we regain an ordered vision of money and return to our heritage of true economic freedom.

Marathon Training and the Regular Cycles of Life

 

Reset the Cruise and Reset Your Mind: Group Training

Another cycle of group training is here after a short off season.

For the last few years, I’ve been staying in the game by jogging 3 to 4 days per week and not missing a lot of ground. Its much easier to stay fit instead of trying to retrain after every off season. That sounds obvious. Don’t let yourself get too out of shape and you won’t have to climb a fitness mountain every season. But we get lazy. Life and obligations change. Injuries alter the direction of our climb. It’s never an easy thing to do. Much easier if like me, you’re single and have minimal obligations. I recognize how unusual this is for most people and I remain circumspect about it. But like all routines in life, we can get to a place of cruise control with enough conscious effort.

Cruise Control

I don’t mean cruise control like it’s easy. But when you take a road trip you expect to use the cruise feature in the car. You disengage through the cities when the traffic is heavy and slow down through road construction zones. But once you’re back in the open, you reset it at a comfortable speed. It’s the most efficient way to drive on the highway. The cruise control reset puts you in a familiar state of mind.

Fitness routines are a lot like that. The quicker you can get to a regular time of exercise or weights, the more efficient your body will be. It learns the rhythm of your stress peaks and valleys. Maybe you like to hit the gym after work and lift heavy. Maybe, like me, you prefer a first thing in the morning run or lifting regimen.  

Either way, when you get into a cycle your body responds and your mind focuses. It’s not as difficult to stay the course once you’re engaged. What’s difficult is not having a routine and struggling with the inner war of wills. Routines are a bulwark against laziness. The more specific the better. I keep my running schedule every Saturday during the offseason because I want my body to know it’s the day we go for a long run. It’s never foolproof of course. Events come up. Work bleeds into the weekend on occasion. Volunteer activities at church force me to miss the occasional day. Thunder storms might ruin plans, but I’m back at it on Sunday. Or, I try to makeup the miles during the week.

Competitive Juices

This isn’t to brag. I’ve met runners who really train. One guy in my group was jogging 60 miles a week when training for a 100 mile trail run a few years ago. I don’t want to do that much. Besides, that’s usually a specific time in a person’s life. Very few people can keep up that schedule year after year. It’s not really the distance or the hours that matter. The growth is in being consistent and understanding how critical your fitness is to the later, and current, years of your life. I’d rather have a steady 20 miles per week for 5 years than do 60 miles a week for a year. Some people are more competitive though. I used to tell people I was competitive because I thought it showed inner strength or something. But the truth is I’m not that competitive. Certainly, I want to win and improve and overcome.

But I don’t need to win at everything. I don’t need to be seen as the best or stand out in some way. For a long time I worried that I was too complacent. In some areas of life I probably am too complacent. But competitive people can’t appreciate improvement over the long term. They can’t have fun because they have to win. They experience an emotional low when they fall short. It's a miserable way to live.

Conclusion

 I was like this a lot when I was younger. Not extreme or aggressive in competitive sports, but I felt that sharp emotional pain of losing and the lasting joy of victory. I prefer jogging now for a lot of reasons. One is the interpersonal nature of it, the grinding, sweaty summers and blustery winters. It’s at once grueling and rhythmic. It’s designed to build up by tearing down. Everyone improves at different rates. My progress has been slow up till now, but that’s also because I’m content with being consistent and steady.

This year I’m trying out different strides. It could use an overhaul. After watching a few You Tube videos from world class runners, I want to try some different things. I’m praying it goes well and cuts down on my exhaustion in the long miles.

Trump's Near Death Experience and God's Providence

 

Evil Plans and God’s Providence

President Trump was shot yesterday. The bullet grazed his ear. This happened at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. He turned his head while talking, grabbed his ear and hit the deck. The Secret Service jumped on him while their sniper shot the assassin. Trump was helped up by the Secret Service, now covering him and walking him to a waiting car. He pumped his fist to the crowd, defiantly and mouthed the words “Fight, Fight, Fight.” This while blood from the gunshot dripped down his ear and onto his face.

A photographer captured his raised fist standing below a flag. It was instantly iconic. The crowd for the most part acted surprised while the shooting was taking place. Some ducked and covered while others stood in place looking around confused. In at least one interview I heard attendees say they thought the shots were fireworks.

Confusion and False Information

They rang out so quickly that it makes sense to be confused about the noise. Sadly, one man was killed by a stray bullet. Reports say he covered his wife and daughter while the shooting was taking place. Early information about the shooter and his identity are usually wrong. This was no different. A photo of a man with dark glasses and a beard, a social media profile pic, started circulating because he made a cryptic post the day before. He’s an ANTIFA member who said something about justice coming soon.

I didn’t dismiss it out of hand but, knowing how these things unfold I let it sit. It looks like that was wrong. I’ve seen a few pictures of the guy since, and news outlets are giving us his name Thomas Mathew Crooks. Why do they always have 3 names?

What and How

Questions hang over the event like the oppressive heat. How was he allowed to get on the roof and have a direct line of sight to the stage? A reporter with the BBC interviewed a man that said he witnessed the shooter “outside the security perimeter”. He told the reporter he noticed the man crawling up the roof with a rifle and tried to signal to the police and secret service officials nearby.

The building where the Crooks fired from was less than 200 yards from the stage. I don’t know a lot about security but that’s way too close. You don’t need to be a particularly skilled shooter to hit something with an AR15 that far away. I think most hunters could make that shot on a windy day. We had to hit pop up targets farther away than that in the Army during the basic marksman course.

Another strange occurrence, a police officer climbed the roof where Crooks was spotted and confronted him. Crooks pointed his rifle at the officer who retreated down the ladder. I guess right after this he turned around, focused on Trump and squeezed off a few rounds. Maybe the police didn’t have a gun to fire back? It sounds like at least, the police were aware of him crawling around on the roof. Possibly they responded to the crowd which were trying to signal about the shooter.

Skepticism and Derision

More will come out in the next few days and then probably nothing for a long time. I’ve long believed the Left wants DJT dead. Their election chances with Biden/Harris are looking worse than ever. The debate showed everyone in America how completely unfit Joe Biden is. They don’t have many options left. They can still try to steal the election, but it has to be relatively close or it’s much harder to do.

I’m not likely to believe the official narrative anymore without some kind of overwhelming proof. That doesn’t the mean the official narrative isn’t correct, just that I’ve listened to too many lies from official channels since Covid. This is no different. I don’t believe this “lone gunman” bullshit anymore. There are too many people in this country that stand to lose if Trump gets back to the White House.

There is corruption deep in the heart of the administrative state and money from dark corners influencing our political leaders. Why do we assume they wouldn’t assassinate a president? Both Shinzo Abe from Japan and Robert Fico from Slovakia were shot in last 2 years. Abe died while Fico survived. I’m just not buying that these are lone actors without some kind of financial backing.

I always come back to this question about assassinations. Would the press tell me if the shooter was connected to some wealthy cabal or intelligence community in elite circles? No chance.

I’ll keep my skepticism and pray for Trump.

Conclusion

I’m a little put off by all the comments from regular folks that we need to “unite” and “come together”. That probably sounds nasty, but what exactly does it mean? Light has nothing in common with darkness. There is a war playing out right now on a global scale between Left and Right. Communists take over countries by sewing chaos among regular people. They use class envy and racial strife and take over institutions. Then they tear down structures, both literally and figuratively. First it’s the monuments of a nation and then it’s the boundaries God set in place. Families are destroyed and sexual identity is said to be fluid. Churches are targets if they hold to biblical truths and sexual morality.

It's a spiritual war that plays out in the natural world. Just because we aren’t fighting an enemy that wears a uniform doesn’t mean we aren’t under attack. This isn’t a time to come together; it’s a time to defeat the forces of darkness. But first you have to recognize it as such. Maybe that’s the next phase of this war, recognition of an evil force and not just a political campaign.

 

 

 

Rory McIlroy, Nerves, and Handling the Press

 

Back to Form in Scotland

Rory McIlroy should’ve won the U.S Open 3 weeks ago in North Carolina. He knows it most of all.

 He played 2 of the last 4 holes poorly, losing 2 strokes to the surging Bryson Dechambeau. Rory popped up yesterday in Scotland to answer a few questions about his meltdown at Pinehurst. There weren’t any surprises in his answers, but he was honest. He was too aware of where Bryson was on the course and it affected how he played his shots. His putt on 18 was just a lack of focus. The pressure was too much. Even the best golfers can make mistakes down the stretch. The story from the U.S Open though, was how McIlroy stormed off after the loss without talking to the press.

He certainly should’ve stayed and done the “good-sport” thing. It’s what’s expected. You shake hands with the winner and talk about what worked, what didn’t. That he didn’t stay is all we need to know about how painful this was. A camera in the clubhouse did catch his sour reaction when Bryson made his putt to win. I’m always impressed by how these athletes go in front of the cameras after a loss and answer questions. Most of them are boiling caldrons waiting to erupt at a question they deem ridiculous. Some of the best sound bites come from angry players and coaches after a heartbreaking loss. Who can forget coach Denny Green’s “They are who we thought they were!” outburst when the Chicago Bears came from behind to embarrass his Arizona Cardinals?

Golf isn’t known for angry, volatile types. They certainly exist though. Watch Tyrrell Hatton miss long on a wedge shot sometime. Or catch Wyndam Clark in the high grass trying to dig his Titleist out of the muck. Even John Rahm loses his cool quite a bit. The press conferences are highly structured though. They leave the outbursts to football. The players are likely coached on how to talk to the press and soften the sharp edges.

I understand that they’re paid to do pressers and face the music, but it still takes an enormous amount of diplomacy. Not all athletes have it. On normal days, Rory is the best at handling the questions. I’ll give him a break on this one. He’s one of golf’s biggest stars and does interviews constantly. He even defended his caddie, Harry Diamond, against criticism that he didn’t step in and make different club selections. I’m not really aware of what caddies are supposed to do other than carry the bag and give advice on wind speed and distance. That’s probably my ignorance as a novice golfer coming through. I suppose if your caddie is also your golf instructor then the relationship is different. It looks like Diamond is a friend first and a caddie second. Which also means, the chance of him stepping in and arguing with a particular approach is unlikely.

Maybe Rory needs an instructor to carry the bag instead of having his friend do it. That’s probably what the criticism (from Hank Haney and others) was all about. Instead of calling Diamond a bum who has no business on the field, you say he should’ve done more. What they really want to say is “Get a real caddie would you?” But it’s not like Rory never wins. It’s been 10 years since his last major but he’s always near the top of the leaderboard during the season. A meltdown like at Pinehurst No. 2 from 3 weeks ago hangs squarely on his shoulders. Caddies don’t hit the ball anyway.

It's occasions like this that remind how good professional athletes are. That sounds a little silly. Of course they’re good, they’re at the top of their game. A few of them, like McIlroy, manage to stay there for years. It’s not just the play I’m talking about, it’s the pressure to win. And when you don’t win, smile and pretend you’re SOOO happy for the other guy that it’s almost worth a loss. Obviously, there is a lot of psychology in this area of sports that these guys have learned about and practiced. But that gut punch feeling of losing a big game when you know you should’ve won doesn’t go away. It ruins some athletes for good too. The pressure becomes unbearable and they fade away. Or they develop a strange tick that affects their performance. 

In baseball it’s called the yips. The most famous case is of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Rick Ankiel. He couldn’t even throw the ball near the plate on back to back starts. Naturally you can’t start a pitcher who’s a head case. He was cut, but shortly remade himself as an outfielder and got back to the majors after a few stints in A and Rookie League ball. That’s a bigger story anyway. Getting to play at that level in two different positions is an amazing feat.

Rory too will bounce back. I’d like to see him win the Open in 2 weeks in Scotland. If he doesn’t win, he should at least do the decent thing and pretend to be happy for whoever did. 

 

Brats and St. Elmo's Fire: The Message is the Same

 

Lessons from the Brat Pack of the 80s

I spent time this past week with two related movies, the Brats documentary and St. Elmo’s Fire.

Reminiscing About the 80’s

 I watched Andrew McCarthy’s Brats first, a retrospection of popular 80’s actors and films. I was too young to see these movies at the time, but it still piqued my interest. I had to familiarize myself with the term “Brat Pack” for one thing. I had some notion that It featured a particular group of young, hot actors in the 80s. A slew of films were made with late teenage to early adult aged kids around this time.

An article in New York magazine called this group of actors in the movie St. Elmo’s Fire the "Brat Pack". It wasn’t a pejorative at the time. Andrew McCarthy, who directed Brats, and starred in the documentary talked about how much they all hated the phrase. “They all” being (McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson). I thought it was a clever turn of phrase meant to signal popularity and an obvious connection to the Rat Pack from the 1960’s. But most of those kids acted for years and even they didn’t all become stars, they had a good run. McCarthy whines about it like it was the bane of his existence. Does anyone believe it cost him roles while Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Demi Moore somehow had no problems?

Watching the ‘Classics’

Brats was a waste of time but at least put me on a path toward watching some of these too-cool films I missed as a kid. I watched St. Elmo’s next. Someone described it in a short review I read as “soapy”. That’s as close to it as any word. Young adults navigate the career world after college and try to shed their immature notions of what life looks like. As a signature 80’s movie with a message it’s quite thin.

It’s roughly about the inherent selfishness we all must contend with at some point in life. We want what we can’t have. The image we have of ourselves and what we think we want are false. The name St. Elmo’s Fire is an illusion that sailors would sometimes observe because the electric field around an object, like a ship’s mast, creates a glow. From a distance it looks like fire. I’m probably not explaining it very well so here’s a description. Rob Lowe’s character Billy explains this to a distraught Jules (Demi Moore) in a scene that encapsulates the message of the film. The idea is that much of what we think we want out of life is an illusion.

Finding Connections

All of them have selfish interests and desires but struggle to shed their immature college selves. Even Wendy (Mare Winningham) in her frumpy-girl way wants a different path than the one her father tries to give her. She can’t let go of her infatuation with Billy no matter how much he takes advantage of her. Both Kirby (Estevez) and Kevin (McCarthy) pine for women they can’t have. Alec (Judd Nelson) wants a mistress and a wife but quickly learns he can’t have both. Jules (Demi Moore) wants to sleep with her boss and stay out late at parties. Billy is a father and young husband who spends his time flirting with groupies at the bar who come to watch his band. Of all the friends making the transition from college student to responsible adult, he has the hardest time.

The opening scene shows the friends in caps and gowns, crossing the quad of Georgetown University and walking toward us. It’s clear this story will involve a group dynamic in the post college phase of life. 

The strength of the story is that friendships can be meaningful and supportive with the right people. It fails on a basic level though to hold anyone accountable. We’re to believe that friendship is stronger than the mistakes we make in pursuit of our own pleasure. It’s not true of course. Relationships gets destroyed over the kind of drunk sex and dishonesty these kids engage in. But it’s a soap too. The force of emotion is supposedly stronger than the damage of betrayal. In its own way though, St. Elmo’s Fire gets it partly right. We do create illusions based on our perception of what’s important in life. But instead of selling us on responsibility it leads to a different illusion, one of self-discovery and false choices.

It turns out the solution to selfishness is…more selfishness.

Discovering the Format

The movie gets the attitudes right. There’s a party energy to the characters that fits a young adult in their post college phase of life; and an appropriate sadness when things fall apart. Jules in particular has an exaggerated sense of her own importance and charm. I wonder if Demi Moore was a lot like her character? Apparently she had some drug or alcohol problems during the filming. It’s mentioned in Brats as McCarthy sits down with her for an interview. She was required to be in rehab when not filming.

A common theme of the Brats documentary was how these movies examined the lives of the youth. Movies weren’t made like that before about 1980. Adult actors made movies with adult themes. This new breed featured young people, with problems that young people could supposedly relate to. John Hughes either wrote or directed a lot of these from the Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink to Sixteen Candles. St. Elmo’s Fire was Joel Schumacher. But the phrase Brat Pack became a generic phrase for any young star in this period. Hardly anyone knew who the original crew was. It’s kind of a running joke in Brats. Some think John Cryer and Lea Thompson, others think Timothy Hutton and Anthony Michael Hall were Brats.

But how bad could a phrase be that sums up your collective ‘sky’s the limit’ careers? The worst anyone can say is that’s it’s a little snarky. The writer David Blum used the word “brats” as a catch-all for upcoming talent while following the male crew of St. Elmo’s for the article. But he mentions Tom Cruise and Sean Penn as Brats in their own right. Most magazine features use a person or group of people as the backdrop for a larger movement. A similar piece on someone like Iggy Pop would’ve examined the larger punk rock movement happing in the country at that time. Other than the clever name it’s a straightforward feature.

Conclusion

The whole idea for the Brats documentary fell apart after the second or third interview. A  mean-spirited writer whose signature article doomed these talented actors doesn’t make sense when so many of them became famous. I think even Andrew McCarthy put that together for himself near the end. His star faded shortly after Weekend at Bernie’s but he isn’t an unknown. It’s also not clear how much he believed the angle of his own film. One of the producers from St. Emo’s (Donner I think) makes a great argument for the success of the New York magazine piece. Brats seems to take a turn into the maybe-she’s-right-about-the-article right around this point in the film.

But then McCarthy sits down with the author David Blum for a mea culpa of sorts about the article and its aftermath. Blum doesn’t offer one. Probably because I’m sympathetic to writers, I was pleased his Blum’s candor. Between the actors’ cocky behavior at the restaurant and their collective rising stars he though “brats” made sense. He has nothing to apologize for.

Neither should McCarthy feel overlooked, we can’t all be Rob Lowe after all. Maybe he should take the message of St. Elmo’s to heart and stop wishing for something he can’t have.